Getting Serious About Enforcing Immigration Law.

Congress returns from their two-week recess on Monday. Negotiations will begin again on an immigration reform bill. (Here.)

The anti-illegal crowd, led by Lou Dobbs, will be pushing lawmakers to pass an immigration law that gets serious about cracking down on illegal aliens. They've got their wall to build, illegal aliens to turn into felons and deport, and American employers to criminalize as well.

The wall has a chance although turning illegal aliens into felons probably won't fly. But what appeals to every political side in this debate is that handy scapegoat: Big bad business, employers.

If there's one thing Republicans and Democrats agree on in the illegal immigration debate, it's that Americans who employ illegal aliens are bad. They're bad! So tougher employer sanctions probably will emerge.

Who knows? Maybe to make sure only Americans and legal aliens can work in our free country we'll all get our very own tamper-proof ID card. Won't that be a great day for America? Home of the free.

Make no mistake, employer sanctions are a pernicious attack on American freedom. The American government now exercises the power to decide which adult is entitled to earn a living and which adult is not. Got it? Work in our country is a privilege granted by the state. And Americans have willingly gone along. Indeed, Americans have fallen all over themselves giving their government the power to decide who can work and who can't.

But years of employer sanctions have shown them to be an ineffective deterrent to illegal immigration. The country is in the mood for serious action against those illegals who come here and "steal our jobs." Anti-illegals say, "America's workers are under attack!" "Our country is being invaded from Mexico!" Lou Dobbs says there's a "war on the middle class."

These are desperate times, and desperate times call for desperate measures. The popular push for employer sanctions shows that Americans are willing to give up a measure of freedom to keep jobs away from foreigners. So let's go all the way. Enough with half-measures like employer sanctions. It's time for reform with teeth.

Let's make it a felony for any illegal alien to buy anything in our country. Even trying to buy something without citizenship or legal residence should be a felony. The privilege of being a consumer in the United States should be limited to Americans and legal aliens.

To make this reform work, the US government will give every American and legal alien an ID card that must be shown with any purchase, whether cash or credit. Just watch the illegal aliens stream back across the border to Mexico when they can't buy anything. "Vaya con dios, amigos!"

Who cares if this reform will give our government the power to decide who can buy food and who can't? Our country is under attack from illegal aliens. What part of illegal, don't you understand? Our very sovereignty is at stake. To protect its citizens against foreign invasion, a country's gotta do, what a country's gotta do.

-tdr

Technorati: borders, illegal immigration, immigration, politics.